The days of waterfall software development on a mainframe are coming to an end. It’s no longer tolerable for end users to have to wait two years for a new application to be written and delivered to a spec that, by then, is two years out of date. The inflexibility of the waterfall methodologies make them uncompetitive in the modern mainframe environment. What’s needed are the faster, more flexible, processes associated with Agile and DevOps ways of working. But what does an organization need to do in order to move from their old way of working to this new way – a way that can bring regular and frequent updates to any application to suit the needs of the users?

For years, pundits have predicted that a generational shift in IT would spell doom for the mainframe. But just the opposite is true. The current generational shift in IT is driving a major mainframe renaissance—along with, ironically, abandonment of x86 datacenter infrastructure.